Automotive vehicles are increasingly being equipped with collision avoidance and warning systems for predicting the potential collision with an external object, such as another vehicle or a pedestrian. Upon detecting a potential collision, such systems typically initiate an action to avoid the collision and/or provide a warning to the vehicle operator. Adaptive cruise control systems have been proposed to track a leading vehicle and automatically control the speed of the following vehicle. The ability to accurately predict an upcoming collision also enables a vehicle controller to control and deploy safety-related devices on the vehicle. For example, upon predicting an anticipated collision or near collision with an object, the vehicle seat belt pretensioner could be activated in a timely manner to pretension the seat belt, thereby enhancing the application of the safety device. The controller could also deploy a warning signal to notify the vehicle driver of a predicted collision with an object.
In conventional vehicle target tracking systems, the host vehicle is generally equipped with a sensor arrangement that acquires range, range rate, and azimuth angle (i.e., direction to target) measurements for each tracked target within a field of view. The sensor arrangement employed in many conventional collision detection systems is generally complex and costly and includes a plurality of radar beams or laser beams covering a field of view. In order to detect an anticipated vehicle collision with an object, the conventional collision detection system generally senses the presence of an object, tracks the movement of the sensed object, and measures the azimuth angle of the object, range to the object, and range rate of the object, all relative to the host vehicle.
The above-mentioned prior known collision detection systems generally require relatively complex and expensive sensor arrangements which use multiple sensors that are required to measure the azimuth angle of the object, relative to the host vehicle, in addition to obtaining the range and range rate measurements. It is generally desirable to reduce the complexity and cost of systems and components employed in automotive vehicles. It is therefore desirable to provide for a vehicle collision detection system which is able to estimate miss distance of an object and predict a potential collision with an approaching object that offers reduced complexity and cost.